The elusive nature of inattentional deafness: assessing the influence of visual attention on background music perception in TV programmes

Abstract

Evaluating the audibility level of background music in TV programmes is a significant challenge as some music industry copyright regulations arrange music remuneration accordingly. Besides the loudness level, other characteristics, such as sensory attention, may influence its perception, raising or lowering its audibility threshold. Yet, there is limited literature exploring this particular problem. Our study examines how visually motivated attention impacts the perception of background music in TV programmes, contributing to inattentional deafness—the failure to perceive auditory stimuli due to visual perceptual load. We conducted two experiments based on forced-choice and detection tasks focused on assessing the influence of visually motivated attention on background music perception in TV programmes. Experiment 1 shows that participants may experience inattentional deafness when visually motivated, but not strongly enough to support our hypothesis. Hence, we refined our methodology in Experiment 2 with a dual-task paradigm to guarantee forced visual-motivated attention. Analysis via a one-way ANOVA demonstrates a statistically significant influence of forced visual attention (Task 1) towards the music perception assignment (Task 2). Thus, our findings indicate that the audibility of background music is subject to the visual stimuli load of the TV programme.